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No mystery about this Arab disarray

Oct 12,2017 - Last updated at Oct 12,2017

As the whirlwind of dozens of major and minor players that interact and battle one another across the Middle East continues unabated, the same players also criss-cross the world to explore new strategic or tactical alliances.

The political dynamics of the Middle East have been totally upended. To try and discern what is going on in the region today one has to look first to Russia, Ankara, Tehran, Tel Aviv and the Dahieh of southern Beirut, with secondary attention to Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Cairo and Doha, and only occasional fleeting glances to Washington and Brussels.

Immediate issues that once riveted our attention may lose some of their urgency or danger.

It is still fascinating but perhaps less ominous than a few years ago to wonder what happens next in the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Syria, what will tens of thousands of takfiri-salafist militants across the region do in the wake of the destruction of Daesh, what is the fate of Yemen, Libya and Palestine.

Is the big story this week still the fate of some small towns on the Syrian-Turkish border, or who first reaches and controls the Syrian-Iraqi Lower Euphrates region?

How long will the Saudis and Emirates continue their two great failed adventures of the war in Yemen and the siege of Qatar?

We cannot predict which existing or unidentified new major actors will influence events in the coming years, in view of the constantly evolving political relations among the many powers operating throughout the Middle East.

This we do know, though: The single momentous dynamic that towers above all others in the Middle East comprises the unknown impact of this unprecedented, ongoing period of non-stop, multiyear warfare in half a dozen countries, with proxy ideological battles in half a dozen others.

Everywhere, it seems, local, regional and global parties all fight each other militarily, while also exploring new political alliances, mostly with non-Arab powers in Russia, Turkey and Iran.

All our big questions can no longer be assessed on the basis of predictable interests and expectations of sovereign states in the Middle East, as had been the case since the 1930s.

Today, Turkey, Iran and Russia coordinate their military presence inside Syria to effectively preserve the presidency of Bashar Assad — and after that they will figure out how to handle the US military, the Daesh remnants, the dozens of smaller takfiri-salafist militants, tribal coalitions and Kurdish aspirations.

Simultaneously, the Saudi monarch is in Russia exploring new commercial, military or tactical political relationships — or perhaps just bluffing.

The United Arab Emirates and Egypt work together to reconfigure the governance system in Gaza, allowing a former small-time Palestinian ruffian named Mohamad Dahlan to share power in the strip with Hamas, Fateh and anyone else who will dance for money.

Their collective survival is at stake in Palestine, and perhaps they have nobody else to turn to — or they simply do not know what to do in these existential times other than in panic to seek a strongman, any strongman will do, to save them, with someone else’s cash.

The combined insult and imbecility of American policy on the Palestine-Israel conflict is captured by President Donald Trump’s determination to rely on his apparently clueless son-in-law Jared Kushner, while the American ambassador to Israel keeps making statements that deny the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and sanctifying Israel’s illegal colonisation of Arab lands.

United Nations agencies meanwhile draw up lists of Israeli companies that exploit the colonised Arab lands so the world can refrain from dealing with them.

These and other bizarre developments alongside our many ongoing wars indicate that the very nature of national sovereignty based on territorial control in the Arab region continues to fray at many of its edges.

The less-than-a-century-long modern legacy of independent states that firmly controlled their land, economies, resources, and means of violence in their armed forces and police is gradually slipping out of modern history’s leaky fingers that never seemed to get a good grip on our area.

So we continue to ask, still with no credible answers: Who is sovereign in northern and eastern Syria this week?

How will things develop in the rest of Syria and Iraq, in the Kurdish regions, throughout Yemen and Libya, or among the post-Daesh militants who supported that short-lived extremist, violent venture?

What is the future of Jerusalem?

Sovereignty, authority, legitimacy and military power in some lands are no longer vested in the hands of Arab central governments.

This peculiar Arab dysfunction sees us living in a region of sovereign states, semi-states, quasi-states, truncated states, states-within-states, invading foreign states, virtual states, mini-states, ethnic and sectarian states, and hollow, helplessly dependent poor states that will dance for money.

They all compete against one another for land, resources and authority in a region that has plentiful land and resources, but much fewer credible single national authorities, as a dozen other forms of power, sovereignty, territoriality and legitimacy continue to spring up and heighten the cacophony.

There is nothing mysterious or unexpected about any of this.

Badly mismanaged countries with degraded populations and little hope of change refuse to remain in a state of permanent anguish.

Some resist. Some rebel. A few try half-heartedly to reform. Many fragment, to be reborn in a thousand smaller pieces, or a handful of militias, or sub-contractors to foreign powers, or just new gangs with friendly nearby funders.

Comments

Yes sounds like its not just Palestinians who were divided but the Arab world at large needs to unite against the zionist entity dividing the region.

wissam Zahawie (not verified)

Fri, 10/13/2017 - 20:48

Khouri ignores the Zionist-Israeli Plan to Remake the Middle East; which is, in essence, Israel's 'Strategy in the 1980s' as expounded by Oded Yinon's essay in the World Zionist Organization's review 'KIVUNIM'; No.14, February 1982.The essay outlines the mechanism whereby Israel intends to engage in a systematic and generalized intervention against the structure of the Arab states.

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The Jordan Times is an independent English-language daily published by the Jordan Press Foundationsince October 26, 1975. The Jordan Press Foundation is a shareholding company listed on the Amman Stock Exchange.